Free Republic

FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA, MAY 25: I want to urge you to actively seek out the most contentious, polarized, gridlocked places you can find, because so often throughout our history, those have been the places where progress really happens. Climate change, economic inequality, human rights, criminal justice -- these are the revolutions of your time. And you have as much responsibility and just as much power to wake up and play your part in our great American story. OBAMA, MAY 9: But as potentially the first African-American first lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and...

A head teacher at a state school in Munich is attempting to introduce a strict Christian regime by hanging crosses in the classroom and holding daily prayers. He’s within the law, but parents and pupils are beginning to resist. According to Spiegel, the headteacher of Geretsried comprehensive was covering a lesson for a class of 14-15 year-olds when a debate broke out after the class refused to say a prayer. At the end of the debate, he said atheists were stupid, sparking outrage among teachers, parents and students alike. Not all pupils are baptized, and some teachers—including the biology teacher—don’t...

"Love is Strange" was a crossover hit by Mickey & Sylvia, which was released in late November 1956. The song was based on a guitar riff by Jody Williams. The song was written by Bo Diddley under the name of his wife at the time, Ethel Smith, and was recorded by Bo and Buddy Holly, among others.".....

NEW YORK – American Express said president Ed Gilligan died suddenly Friday after falling ill while flying on a corporate plane to New York. The credit card company said the 55-year-old executive was coming back from a business trip. The plane made an emergency landing in the U.S., an American Express spokeswoman said, but she declined to say where Gilligan had been.

Some times I get real bored.. Or I'm losing at online poker and wondering why it is worthwhile to tap away on a keyboard trying to advance the cause of sanity and its return to the common man's mind in an uncommon time. Or I figure what better way to let a few here vent.. As Rome burns. Plus I haven't had a thread in the Smoky BarrenLand room in ages..

No need to head to the multiplex for big action, special effects and hair-raising thrills, says bestselling author James Patterson, when the CBS adaptation of his novel, "Zoo," promises all that — and rampaging wildlife, to boot. "It should give the summer movies a run for their money," said Patterson, a populist literary star perhaps best known for his Alex Cross franchise, less so for being understated. "There's horror, sci-fi, suspense. It's kind of James Patterson meets Stephen King meets Michael Crichton. It's a scary fable."

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, known for his opposition to federal courts imposing same-sex “marriage” on states, says U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg could be penalized for her public advocacy of “gay” rights as the court considers a case that could redefine marriage in federal law. “It’s called impeachment,” he told WND on Thursday.

Kelly Rutherford’s long international nightmare may soon be coming to an end. She’s thrilled. So am I. “This is about my kids,’’ she told me this week, exhausted, after getting off a plane in New York City from Europe, where Rutherford was barred from seeing daughter Helena, 5, and son Hermes, 8. “They’ve been through a lot,’’ she said. Yet she’d fight the kids’ father for their company until her last breath.

Only 63 percent of Americans have saved any money for retirement within the past year, according to a Federal Reserve survey released Wednesday.The survey of 5,800 Americans, conducted last fall, found that 31 percent of Americans have no retirement savings or pension plans. And among adults older than 45, almost 25 percent of respondents didn't have retirement savings. Thirty-eight percent of respondents, meanwhile, said they don't plan on retiring and will "keep working as long as possible," USA Today reports.

There are countless reasons to be outraged by last week's revelations that a waiter at Huck Finn's, a French Quarter restaurant, thought it appropriate to print the N-word on a receipt delivered to a table of African-American diners. Debate over whether the racial invective was an "isolated incident" has raged online for a week. While I find it difficult not to question a working environment that allowed for an employee to use the company point of sale system as a forum for bathroom wall graffiti, the truth of whether the act was an aberration is immaterial to the issue of...

On May 28, Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. denied the District of Columbia’s request for an administrative state in the ruling against the “good reason” provision in DC’s concealed carry permitting process. The “good reason” requirement forced residents applying for a concealed carry permit to demonstrate a justification for wanting to carry a gun. Breitbart News previously reported that Judge Scullin ruled against the requirement on May 18, saying it “impinges on Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment right to bear arms.” The administrative stay would have extended the effective date for Scullin’s May 18 ruling, giving the city more time to evaluate...

Women the world over have to deal with “hey, baby” and worse from catcallers while walking on the sidewalk or riding the train — and most say the harassment started when they were girls. Street harassment is so common around the globe that 84% of women say they experienced it before turning 17, a new study found. More than half told researchers they have been fondled orgroped, according to the global online survey of more than 16,600 women, by anti-harassment group Hollaback! and Cornell University. “This is a global problem. This really points to the fact that it is a...

It’s a racially charged photo the Chicago Police Department didn’t want the public to see: two white cops posing with rifles as they stand over a black man lying on his belly with deer antlers on his head. But a Cook County judge has refused to keep secret the shocking image of former Officers Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan kneeling with what the police department says is an unidentified African-American drug suspect. Believed to have been taken in a West Side police station between 1999 and 2003, the Polaroid photo was given to the city by the feds in 2013...

New Orleans police are investigating a fight that broke out Wednesday (May 27) evening on a Central City street. Officer Juan Barnes said police were called to the 2400 block of Magnolia Street around 7:30 p.m.

I just heard Walker on Neal Cavuto's program hint that he might consider a Walker/Rubio ticket. What do Freepers think of this?

7 Stages of the Progressive Agenda STAGE 1: Identify the issue. Any Progressive can make an issue out of anything. That's the Power of the People! Just name it and blame Republicans. Many issues never go beyond Stage 1 because they are so readily and widely embraced by the masses. Examples include free cell phones, free gas, and free Obama money from his stash. Whatever the issue, throw it at the wall and don't worry if it doesn't stick—there are at least six more ways to make sure it does! STAGE 2: Promote the issue. Exhort media minions to give...

BALTIMORE (AP) — A 31-year-old woman and a young boy were shot in the head Thursday, becoming Baltimore’s 37th and 38th homicide victims so far this month, the city’s deadliest in 15 years. Meanwhile, arrests have plunged: Police are booking fewer than half the number of people they pulled off the streets last year. Arrests were already declining before Freddie Gray died on April 19 of injuries he suffered in police custody, but they dropped sharply thereafter, as his death unleashed protests, riots, the criminal indictment of six officers and a full-on civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department...

The number of American babies who have been aborted in the years since the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision has already exceeded the entire population of the United States as recorded in the 1880 Census. This is according to numbers published by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Guttmacher Institute. In 1880, according to the Census Bureau, there were 50,189,209 people in the United States. These included, the Census Bureau notes, Mark Twain, who had not yet written The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Thomas Edison, who would start his electrical company two years later; and Booker T. Washington,...

Track star and Ivy-League freshman student Madison Holleran, age 19, had been a “happy go lucky,” though achievement-oriented, kid all her life, according to her father. She had no history of mental illness. At home for Christmas break last year, she broke down and told her parents that she had been having suicidal thoughts and was depressed. Her mother said that “I was shocked. She’s never been depressed before,” according to the Daily Mail. “I knew she needed a therapist, but I couldn’t get her an appointment because it was weekend.” Madison seemed to respond somewhat to the TLC she...

The elephants in the room lumber about, undisturbed by politicians or people of vision. The hard issues of the economy are well known. Politicians, bureaucracies, CEOs and trade union leaders have dealt the the issues of productivity, unemployment, competition from east and west, the collapse of industries through the decades of the 20th, and now the 21st, centuries. Yet these are harder now. Intelligent systems, robotic manufacturing, driverless vehicles, online services, all carve deep into established trades. In the post-war decades, every time a new technology came along, the feared bonfire of jobs didn’t happen — or only briefly and...